


nor any drop to drink

by sauntering_down



Category: Free!
Genre: Free! Kink Meme, Haru discovers his fetishes at the worst possible time, M/M, Nagisa is a budding criminal, Omorashi, Rin fucks up, Rin sulks, Wetting, absolutely nothing is resolved because there are still four episodes left, cameos from everyone else, lots of swearing and misery because Rin, post-prefectural relay, very very light on the RinHaru FYI, way more plot than kink tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sauntering_down/pseuds/sauntering_down
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clearly the best way to make Rin and Haru work out their issues is to lock them in a closet after the prefectural relay.  <i>Clearly.</i></p><p>'“Makoto didn’t hurt you when he threw you in here, did he?”</p><p>Rin snorted.  “Makoto couldn’t hurt a fly.”  That guy hadn’t changed a bit in four years.  Actually, now that he thought of it, <i>none</i> of them had, and maybe that was the problem.  Haru was still more interested in water than people, Makoto was still too damn sweet and selfless for his own good, and Nagisa still behaved like he’d drunk six cups of coffee and chased them with a handful of amphetamines.  They expected Rin to be the same dopey, clingy, obnoxiously idealistic kid he’d been in sixth grade and didn’t understand that he had moved on, left that stupid boy behind to win last place at every race.  There was no room for sentimental crybabies in the Olympics.  Unlike the rest of them, he’d actually grown up, which made all the more pathetic the fact that he was standing here crossing and uncrossing his legs and trying not to think about how screwed he was if his bladder popped like an overinflated balloon.'</p><p>(nutrition facts: 90% plot, 10% pee.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a disgrace.
> 
> Kink meme prompt [here](http://iwatobiswimclub.dreamwidth.org/1985.html?thread=2007745). I'm pretty sure OP didn't want quite so much plot going on, but it turns out I am horrible at writing this kink so I kind of buried it in plot. If you're here for the pee, it's at the end, I promise.
> 
> The RinHaru is really, _really_ minimal, jsyk.

“ – something’s wrong with him – see, he’s just _standing_ there, he won’t answer me or say anything and I don’t even think he can hear me –”

They were still hugging.  It’d been three forevers since the race ended, the teams for the next heat were already milling around the blocks and adjusting goggles, and those idiots were _still hugging_.  Well, Haru was just standing there with his arms hanging at his sides, but that was to be expected.  Haru didn’t really do hugs.  He’d need a crowbar to pry Nagisa off his chest, though, and Makoto had an arm around his shoulders, that huge, sentimental grin of his shining like the sun… and then there was Speedo Glasses, the one glaring mistake in the whole pretty, sappy picture.  If Rin closed an eye, held up his thumb and blocked that guy out of view, would it all look better then?  It wouldn’t be perfect, but at least the misfit piece would be gone, rather than pounded into a place where it didn’t belong.

 _God_ , Rin thought.  _Couldn’t they have gotten someone who doesn’t **suck**?_

A pair of hands collided in front of his face with a sharp _SLAP_.  “Jesus fucking –!” Rin propelled himself backwards, instinctive, uncoordinated, and Seijuurou’s arm snaked out and seized Rin’s collar before he went ass-over-teakettle.  He was grinning, the jerk.  Rin glared at him first, then at Nitori, who was standing further off and clearly the bringer of reinforcements.  He had a vague memory of the younger boy calling him several times, concern and panic building in his voice, and not being able to croak out a reply around the lump in his throat.

“Nah, he’s fine,” Seijuurou said.  “Just zoned out.  Thanks for finding him, though.  Move it, you’re supposed to be in the bleachers with the rest of us.”  He tugged the collar of Rin’s jacket hard enough to make him stumble and started dragging him towards the stairs.

“Wait, I don’t – _wait_ –” Rin craned his neck, looked back, but there was another team in the lane now, another backstroke swimmer plunging into the water, and Haru and the others were gone. “Dammit, let go and _leave me alone!”_

When the captain remained deaf to his protests, Rin fit his index finger and thumb around the joint of Seijuurou’s wrist and _pinched_.  Seijuurou squeaked, swore – but his grip didn’t loosen, and instead he turned around, yanked Rin in close until their noses were almost touching.  “Look, Matsuoka.  I don’t know what crawled up your ass and died, but you are part of a _team_.  Don’t you remember what I said this morning?”

Like he could forget.  Before they’d all piled into the bus, Seijuurou had gathered them in front of the school and impressed upon them the importance of team spirit and cheering for the guys who were representing Samezuka in today’s races, his eyes on Rin the entire time, making sure there was no mistaking who that little lecture was meant for.  Rin really couldn’t claim he didn’t remember, so he bit his tongue and nodded, leaving space for Seijuurou to continue.  “Good.  Then you know damn well that you’re supposed to be up there supporting your teammates instead of sulking around down here.  Let’s go.”

Seijuurou’s tone was light, friendly.  His eyes were as hard as steel.  Rin was treading on thin ice and he knew it, but there were matters at hand slightly more pressing than _team spirit_.  “Fine.  I’ll meet you up there.  I have to go to the bathroom first.”

“Our relay’s in fifteen minutes.  You can wait.”

The pull on his collar felt like defeat.  Rin wisely stopped resisting and followed his captain up the stairs into the stands, taking the steps two at a time.  Nitori jogged along behind him, fingers fluttering near Rin’s elbow, like he was still afraid Rin might actually keel over or something.  “Now sit down and behave,” Seijuurou said when they reached Samezuka’s section, swinging into his seat.

And that was how Rin got stuck spending the next twenty minutes between Seijuurou and Nitori, trapped like a kid who’d been sent to the Naughty Chair.  There was no chance of escape as long as they sandwiched him.  Seriously, all he wanted to do was go take a leak, and Seijuurou was treating him as if Rin needed to be on a leash.  Well, he could force him to sit here, but he couldn’t force him to pay attention.  The Iwatobi team hadn’t returned to their spot on the bleachers yet, so he stared at a spot about a meter above his sister’s windblown hair and mentally checked out, getting lost in his head. 

Bad idea.  His very first thought upon recalling the relay was _it should have been me._   He kicked that one in the face until it shut up, then busied himself with revising his training regimen for the regional 100m freestyle.

His first indication that Samezuka had won the race was the sudden explosion of screaming and merriment around him.  Rin wandered back into reality and glanced down at the pool, where the freestyler on their medley relay team was just clambering out of the water.  He was instantly surrounded by his teammates, but rather than fling themselves into a group hug like a pack of dweebs, they slapped each other on the back and high-fived and grinned up at the rest of the team.  Realizing this might be his only chance, Rin looked to his left, his right – Seijuurou was preoccupied with their win, as was Nitori, who was practically hanging over the railing – then simply stood up, climbed across Nitori’s deserted seat, and walked off without anyone stopping him.  Hooray, they’d made it to regionals.  Rin had already made it to regionals, first of all, and second, he had to piss like a fucking racehorse.

The first bathroom he came across, the one closest to the locker room, was definitely out.  It had a _queue_.  Rin wasn’t normally opposed to standing in line, but he’d gone for a run this morning before prefecturals, guzzled two and a half bottles of water to combat the midsummer heat, and now he was feeling it.  Not that it would’ve mattered as much, if Seijuurou had just let him go instead of acting like a teacher on a power trip and making him sit down and shut up….  Muttering darkly under his breath, Rin shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and kept walking.  The venue was pretty big – chances were he’d come across another bathroom sooner or later.  Hopefully sooner.

His treacherous brain crept back into dangerous territory again.  How had that lot gotten Haru to agree to a relay?  It took Rin weeks of pushing, pleading, and downright manipulation before Haru quit bitching about only swimming _free_ and finally gave in – he couldn’t imagine things had changed all that much.  Makoto didn’t have the personality to force Haru into anything he didn’t want to do, and from the looks of it, Speedo Glasses wasn’t the type either.  Nagisa, on the other hand… possibly.

God, he didn’t even want to be thinking about this.  For twenty glorious minutes yesterday, everything had been _right_.  He’d reclaimed his passion for competitive swimming, won his race against Haru, finally shed the cumbersome, aching cloak of _failure_ that had bogged him down since he first went to Australia… and then stupid Makoto came along with his stupid theories about swimming for the team and his stupid disappointed face that made Rin feel all of about five years old, and everything was ruined again. 

He only realized he’d crossed into a less-used section of the building when the posters and advertisements freckling the walls started dating back to the early 2000s.  Here and there he passed an empty, grimy vending machine.  His bladder urged him on, driving him past dusty benches and trash cans with a centimeter of litter dusting their bottoms, until at last he came to a sign at the end of the hall: **< -Toilets**.  _About time_ , Rin thought, stepping around the corner.

Something soft hit him in the face.

“Hey!  What –” He reached up and grabbed at it, tried to pull it away, felt a zipper – someone’s jacket? – but the material tightened, reducing his vision to a white blur, and panic spiked his heart rate as a pair of arms wrapped around his biceps.  “Get the hell off of me!” Rin snarled, trying to twist out of his attacker’s grasp.  Shit, was this some kind of _kidnapping?_ At a swim meet?  Who would even –

“Relax, Rin-chan, it’s just us!”

Wait.  He knew that voice.  The surge of panic was very, very quickly flooded with irritation.  “ _Nagisa_?!  Are you – what _is_ this?”  An instant later, he realized it had been stupid to stop moving, as his captor seemed to be tying the sleeves of the jacket tightly behind his neck.  Thinking fast, Rin let his chin drop against his chest, then flung his head back until it impacted something hard.

“Ow, _fuck!”_

Rin recognized that voice too, and wow, he hadn’t thought Makoto even _knew_ that word.  It was one of his personal favorites and he used it liberally whenever necessary.  Now, for instance.  “Makoto, if you don’t get the fuck off of me, I’m going to strangle you with your own fucking –”

“Ah, Mako-chan, you’re bleeding,” Nagisa interrupted.  He sounded close by, but Rin couldn’t tell exactly where, which made him nervous.  It was like knowing there was an Eastern brown snake lurking around his feet and yet being unable to see it – did he ever wish _that_ wasn’t a situation he was familiar with.

“I know,” Makoto said thickly.  Rin tried to feel sorry for bloodying his nose and found he couldn’t.  “It’s okay, Rin, we’re not going to hurt you.  Just come with us, all right?”

Rin’s first instinct was to refuse and try breaking Makoto’s face again, and had it been Haru or Nagisa pinning his arms to his sides, he would have, but intentionally hurting Makoto was like punching a bunny.  Besides, Nagisa had probably roped him into this, the poor sucker.  “Could you take this thing off my head?”

“Um….”

“No, leave it on.  It’s more authentic that way!”

“I hate you both,” Rin said calmly.  Struggling was useless at this point – Makoto was seventy-five percent solid muscle and twenty-five percent kittens and cuddles.  Why did everyone feel the need to manhandle him today?  “Especially you, Hazuki.  You’re second on my kill list.”

“Only second?” Nagisa actually sounded _disappointed_ , and for one awful moment, Rin almost couldn’t gulp down the laughter that bubbled up in his throat.  He didn’t need these guys.  They were holding him back (and, at present, trying to kidnap him) and he wasn’t going to encourage them.  “Oh well, I guess I have something to aspire to.  Onward!”

“I’m really sorry about this,” Makoto said quietly, beginning to push Rin along.  Clinging to the last of his dignity, Rin said nothing.  He couldn’t see much of anything with the jacket covering his face, but he suspected they were not taking him anywhere near a bathroom.  As he was marched down the hallway in a slightly unnatural stride to match Makoto’s, every step reverberated up his legs and into his full bladder – an unpleasant problem, certainly, but not yet an urgent one.  He’d see what these idiots wanted and then make a run for it.

“Take a left here, Mako-chan, we’re almost there.”

“Where are we going?” Rin asked, not particularly expecting an answer.

“You’ll find out!”

“How the hell did you even know where I was?”

Nagisa giggled.  “I followed you, of course.  No, _left_ , Mako-chan –” A hand snagged Rin’s sleeve, jerked – he was forced into an awkward sidestep so he didn’t fall, but _ouch_ , being jostled like that was not a good idea right now.  Rin sucked a breath through his teeth.  Maybe his problem was a little more urgent than previously assumed.  _Screw it_ , he thought, renewing his resistance, trying to shake Makoto off while the other boy was tripping over his own feet.

“Rin?”

Rin froze. 

_Oh, no.  No.  Not now_.  Of all the people he didn’t want to see, hear, speak to, or share oxygen with anymore… Rin had _beaten_ Haru.  No longer did he have to fight his way out of the shadow of someone so _talented_ , so _gifted_ , who had so much promise and didn’t do a single damn thing with it.  They weren’t friends and they weren’t rivals and he didn’t give a shit if Haru spent the rest of his life swimming in useless relays with his BFFs.  _Fuck this._   Rin took a step back and settled all of his weight on Makoto’s toes.  Makoto whimpered faintly, but he released Rin’s arms, started fumbling with the knot tying the jacket around Rin’s head –

“Now!” Nagisa shouted, and several things happened at once.

First, the jacket was whipped away from Rin’s face, and he was momentarily blinded by the blaze of fluorescent light.  A pair of hands rammed into the small of his back – once again, he had no choice but to move with it, stumbling forward so he didn’t get intimate with the tile.  Something big and heavy and warm crashed into him from behind – “ _Hey!”_ Haru yelped – Rin hit a wall, Haru grabbed his arm for balance, and a door slammed shut, plunging them into darkness.

There was an instant where Rin was aware of nothing but the curve of Haru’s hip pressing into his ass.

Then he heard the _click_ of a lock and swore, pushing Haru away, turning and reaching until his fingers met the doorknob.  He could only turn it halfway before it caught.  “Did you just lock us in a fucking _closet?!”_ Rin shouted. 

“Nagisa,” Makoto said, instead of answering Rin’s very valid question, “where did you get that key…?”

“The janitor’s office!  It was empty, so I took a look around – they even had a map showing where everything was, it was like they _wanted_ us to do this.”

Makoto sighed.  “ _Please_ don’t get arrested before regionals.”

“Don’t be silly, of course I won’t.  Okay, Haru-chan, Rin-chan, listen up!” Nagisa thumped his knuckles against the door.  “You two have been sulking and avoiding your issues for way too long!  It’s time you talked it out, or hugged it out, or whatever works for you.”

“Fuck that!” Rin kicked the door with all of his might.  It rattled in its frame, but showed no signs of weakening.

“You shouldn’t do that.” He couldn’t immediately place that voice, so presumably it belonged to Speedo Glasses.  “The door opens inwards.  You aren’t going to be able to kick it down.  You’ll just break your foot.”

“I don’t give a damn.  Let me out of here!”

“Nope!” Nagisa chirped.  Rin pictured himself wringing Nagisa’s neck.  “Now, we’re going to leave you two alone to chat.  We’ll come back at lunchtime to let you out, okay?”

“No, it’s not fucking okay!” Rin glared at Haru – or where he thought Haru was standing, because he could see nothing but a faint line of light beneath the door.  “Are you just going to let them do this?”

“Makoto, let us out,” Haru said.  “I’m hungry.”

It was suddenly quiet outside the closet, and Rin allowed himself a spark of hope, that Makoto might buckle and release them… but then Makoto mumbled, “Sorry, Haru.  It’s only for a little while.”

“And it’s for your own good!  Oh, and Rin-chan, don’t bother calling Gou-chan for help – she’s on board with this.  She’s distracting Ama-chan-sensei and Coach Sasabe for us.  See you later!” 

Rin slammed both his fists against the door.  “ _Nagisa_!  If you don’t get your skinny ass back here _right now_ and unlock this door, I am going to find out where you live and _burn your fucking house down_!”

Nagisa laughed, bright and clear as a bell, and then there was silence.  Rin screamed from sheer frustration and kicked the wall.  It turned out to be made of concrete blocks.

“I think you’re overreacting a little bit,” Haru said while Rin was hopping on one foot, massaging his throbbing toes and cursing the air blue.

“Overreacting?  We’re trapped in a closet!”

Haru shifted.  The material of his jacket whispered against the wall.  “Are you claustrophobic?”

“No,” Rin said, realizing much too late that he’d had the perfect opportunity to flee and missed out.  Makoto was such a bleeding heart, he would’ve believed it if Rin said he was afraid of small spaces.  Now he was stuck in this dark, dank little closet with Haru, choking on the scent of mold and stagnant cleaning products, and he still _really_ needed to go to the bathroom.  _Fuck_. 

All right, he could handle this.  It was a classic case of mind-over-matter.  He could wait.  “Your friends are assholes, I hope you know that.”

“They used to be your friends, too.”

There was no weight behind the words, no hidden anger or admonishment, but Rin still felt like he’d been slugged in the stomach, and it took him a minute to scrape up a reply.  “Not Speedo Glasses.  Where the hell did you find that guy, anyway?”

“Rei?  The track team.”

“Figures.  Someone needs to tell him that he swims like a butterfly with its wings ripped off.  He’s dragging you down.  You would’ve beaten the other teams by a mile if you hadn’t needed to make up for him.” 

He’d thrown the gauntlet.  Haru let it sail by without a word.  Gritting his teeth, Rin scrunched his fingers into the fabric covering his thighs – he needed an argument, something to keep his mind off of the demanding pressure.  He’d gotten _so close_ to the bathroom, and having that relief ripped away at the last minute was agonizing.  “Don’t you have anybody else you can stick on that leg?  You’re going to have to lose Speedo Glasses if you want any chance of making it past regionals.  He’s hopeless.”

“Be quiet,” Haru said sharply.  Finally, a sign of life!  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Rin laughed, but stopped quickly before his bladder took offense.  “Don’t I?  I’ve been swimming since I was four, and two months ago, _he_ was still sinking like a rock.  Face it, Haru, you took a complete beginner and tried to turn him into a competitive swimmer in a couple of weeks.  That’s fucking impossible.”

“He does well enough for a complete beginner,” Haru said, and his tone clearly indicated that he would say no more on the subject.  Rin kicked the door once more for good measure and then slumped against the wall, squeezing his legs together.  His eyes were beginning to adjust to the lack of light – he could still only see shadows, but there was a dark, Haru-shaped shadow leaning on another shadow he assumed was the opposite wall.

“Whatever,” Rin muttered.  “You could’ve at least replaced me with someone who knew what they were doing.”

“Replaced?” Haru repeated.  Something about the way he said the word sent Rin’s stomach into backflips.  “We didn’t _replace_ you.  You aren’t on our team.  You don’t even want to swim with us anymore.”

Haru said _us_ , but Rin heard _me_ – and it was true, he didn’t want to swim with Haru anymore.  He didn’t want to waste another four years of his life falling behind and knowing he’d never be good enough to catch up.  “Whatever,” he said again.  “It doesn’t matter either way.”  Iwatobi’s butterflyer still sucked.  They weren’t going to get anywhere with a guy like that, but if they wouldn’t listen, Rin wasn’t going to waste his breath.

Haru moved a bit – Rin heard a soft _thunk_ , a mumbled “Ow”, and then Haru said, “I don’t understand you.”

“Good.”

“You’re the one who always insisted we were friends.”

“We aren’t _friends_!” Rin snapped, smacking his palm against the wall.  “We were _never_ friends!  You were just my relay team.  I needed you so I could win the damn race, _that was all_.  You weren’t my friends, you were fucking _disposable_ – or did the fact that I went to Australia and never once called or wrote to any of you not clue you in?”

His voice echoed away, and all Haru did was sigh, like a parent tired of reasoning with their irrational child.  Rin crammed his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t go over there and punch him in his dumb smug _I only swim free_ face.  His knuckles struck something solid.  He pulled out his cell phone, unlocked the screen, and checked the time: eleven-thirteen.  Nagisa had said they’d be freed at lunchtime, right?  “When’s lunch around here?”

“I don’t know.” 

“You’re loads of help,” Rin grumbled.  As he wasn’t swimming in any events today, he hadn’t done more than give the schedule a cursory look.  Assuming the races would pause for lunch at noon, that meant he was looking forward to another forty-seven minutes locked in this dirty, bathroomless closet.  There was no way in hell he was waiting that long.  He _could_ (he had to keep telling himself he could), but it would be miserable.  He didn’t have Nagisa’s phone number, Gou was apparently out, and Haru was in the closet with him – wait, did he still have the voicemail Makoto had sent him months ago?  Rin quickly scrolled back through his messages, shifting from foot to foot, and… success!  He stuck the number into his contacts for convenience, opened a new text, and began to type.

**Rin (11:15)**

**Makoto**

**Rin (11:15)**

**let us out of here**

**Rin (11:16)**

**now**

**Rin (11:20)**

**don’t ignore me dammit**

**Rin (11:21)**

**get down here and unlock this fucking door**

**Rin (11:22)**

**my captain’s going to be pissed if i’m missing for hours  
**

**Rin (11:22)**

**MAKOTO**

**Rin (11:22)**

**i’ll kill your parents**

**Makoto (11:22)**

**rin-chan is mean o(** **╥** **﹏** **╥** **)o**

**Rin (11:23)**

**give Makoto the phone you little shit**

**Makoto (11:23)**

**no**

**Makoto (11:23)**

**mako-chan is weak.  he’ll give in.**

**Makoto (11:24)**

**i am firm like rei-chan’s abs**

**Rin (11:24)**

**what**

**Rin (11:24)**

**Nagisa**

**Makoto (11:25)**

**oops the next race is starting!  bye rinrin~**  (｡･ω･)ﾉﾞ

**Rin (11:25)**

**NAGISA**

No matter how much he swore, threatened, or complained, no response was forthcoming.  Growling, Rin put his phone away and tucked one knee behind the other, leaving no space between his thighs.  It did little besides blunt the worst of the pressure, but he’d take it.  “I can’t _believe_ that runty bastard shoved us in here….”

“I can.”

Rin sighed.  “Yeah, so can I.  I don’t know why I said that.”  He was not looking forward to explaining to Seijuurou why he’d disappeared after the relay – _my dumbass ex-teammate locked me in a closet_ sounded like bullshit.  He would keep the text messages as evidence, maybe that would help.  If not, well, Seijuurou’s punishments usually just involved extra training, and that was something Rin did all the time anyway. 

He’d chipped away at the past ten minutes, distracted by trying to kill Makoto and Nagisa with his brain, but more than half an hour still remained until noon and he needed to _go_.  The weight sitting in the cradle of his hips wasn’t getting any lighter.  _This isn’t the worst it’s ever been_ , Rin reminded himself in order to put the situation into perspective.  Childhood road trips to visit his mother’s brother came to mind – his mom had a unique ability to always choose the most crowded roads, no matter the time of day, and about half of every journey was spent in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Back then, it had been something of a game between him and Gou, seeing who would crack and beg for a bathroom break first.  Rin lost far more often than he wanted to admit.  Or, nowadays, he would suffer if he woke up in the morning while Nitori was showering.  That kid was going to get a painful reality check when he had to pay his own water bills.  He could waste forty minutes in the bathroom as Rin’s bladder denied him further sleep.  But in those circumstances, there were always solutions – rest stops, conveniently empty bottles, inconveniently full bottles which had their contents sacrificed for the greater good, shouting at Nitori to move his ass, swallowing his pride and asking to use someone else’s bathroom.  Unless Haru didn’t mind getting his feet a bit wet, Rin was on his own here.

This train of thought wasn’t helping.  Rin started to feel claustrophobic for reasons entirely unrelated to the size of the closet.  No matter how often he told himself _hold it, you’re not a baby, you can wait_ , it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if his bladder got any fuller, and thirty minutes was looking like thirty years.  Thankful that the closet wasn’t lit, he gave in to the childish desire to cross his legs and push his hand against his crotch, taking the edge off.  His breath hissed noisily between his teeth.  This was fucking ridiculous and Nagisa was a dead man when Rin got out of here.

“Are you okay?” Haru said suddenly.

Not at all, but Haru didn’t need to know that.  He’d probably just laugh or something.  “Fine,” Rin grunted.

“Makoto didn’t hurt you when he threw you in here, did he?”

Rin snorted.  “Makoto couldn’t hurt a fly.”  That guy hadn’t changed a bit in four years.  Actually, now that he thought of it, _none_ of them had, and maybe that was the problem.  Haru was still more interested in water than people, Makoto was still too damn sweet and selfless for his own good, and Nagisa still behaved like he’d drunk six cups of coffee and chased them with a handful of amphetamines.  They expected Rin to be the same dopey, clingy, obnoxiously idealistic kid he’d been in sixth grade and didn’t understand that he had moved on, left that stupid boy behind to win last place at every race.  There was no room for sentimental crybabies in the Olympics.  Unlike the rest of them, he’d actually grown up, which made all the more pathetic the fact that he was standing here crossing and uncrossing his legs and trying not to think about how screwed he was if his bladder popped like an overinflated balloon.  Time to see if he had any other options open to him.  On his left was nothing but the wall and the door; on his right, a long, wooden stick that ended in a crown of splinters.  He poked at it with his foot and found something soft.  A mop, perhaps. Further tactile inspection of the wall revealed what felt like a light switch.  Rin left it alone.  He didn’t want Haru to see him squirm.  “What’s over there?”

“Cobwebs,” Haru said.  He moved, knocked into something again.  “This shelf I keep banging my head against.  There’s nothing on it.  That’s all.”

Great.  An empty shelf and a broken mop without a bucket.  He really could’ve used a bucket right about now, modesty be damned.  The thought that maybe the mop was going to get some use tiptoed into his brain – and with it came one of those awful, sphincter-clenching waves of desperation, sending his free hand down to join the other between his legs and strangling a pained groan from his throat.  There was a rustle of fabric from the other side of the closet, but Rin ignored it, hunching over and tightening his hold on his bladder until he was reasonably sure it wasn’t going to simply give out.  _Fuck.  This_.  Nagisa was getting a two-minute head start while Rin found a bathroom, and then his death was going to be as slow and torturous as Rin could possibly make it.

Something brushed the side of his head.  Out of nowhere, a pair of hands settled on his shoulders.  “Rin.” Haru sounded much too close for comfort.  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?  Makoto doesn’t know his own strength, sometimes….”

“Get off of me!” Rin spat.  He didn’t currently have the range of motion to shove Haru away, so Haru stayed where he was, hands wandering down towards Rin’s elbows – and abruptly stopping.

“Oh,” Haru said.  “ _Oh_.  You just need to pee, right?”

Trust Haru to state the completely fucking obvious.  “Back.  Off,” Rin ground out, glad Haru couldn’t see how red his face was – although, he’d managed to deduce Rin’s problem in near-pitch blackness,  so his night vision might be better than Rin was giving him credit for.  The hands slipped away and Haru obligingly retreated to the opposite wall.

“You should’ve said something before the others left.  Even Nagisa’s not that cruel.”

“Shut up.” And Nagisa _was_ that cruel, he didn’t know what the hell Haru was talking about.  Once most of the urge had passed, Rin carefully stood up straight, pushed his hair out of his face.  Little beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead.  One or two more like that and he was doomed – time to appeal to Makoto’s conscience and pray Nagisa had given him his phone back.

**Rin (11:33)**

**please let us out of here.  we’re both hungry and i have to go to the bathroom and i don’t think Haru’s ever been away from water for this long**

And while he was at it (god, had it really been only eight minutes?), he figured he might as well try lying.

**Rin (11:33)**

**we talked things out.  we’re okay now.  unlock the door.**

**Makoto (11:34)**

**YOU SPEAK LIES**   **ヽ** **(** **●** **-`Д´-)** **ノ**

**Rin (11:34)**

**HAZUKI I’M GOING TO CAVE YOUR FUCKING SKULL IN LIKE A MELON**

**Rin (11:34)**

**GET OVER HERE AND OPEN THE DOOR YOU SON OF A BITCH**

**Makoto (11:35)**

**no**

**Makoto (11:35)**

**kiss and make up first**

**Makoto (11:35)**

**i’ll know if you don’t.  i see all.**

**Makoto (11:35)**

**samezuka came in third in the freestyle relay fyi** **(** **っ** **˘** **̩╭╮** **˘** **̩** **)** **っ**

**Rin (11:36)**

**i don’t care**

**Makoto (11:36)**

**that’s not nice.  they’re your teammates.  you’re supposed to care.**

Rin gave up and put his phone away.  He knew he was _supposed_ to care, but between classes, daily piles of homework, a rigorous swimming schedule, extra training, and squeezing in enough hours of sleep to function, he just didn’t have the energy left over to care about races he wasn’t in.  The only good thing about his Australian school was that _everyone_ had been a swimmer and there wasn’t enough room on the buses to take two hundred kids to meets, so anybody who wasn’t competing but wanted to go had to sign up in advance.  Rin never did.  He was just so _tired_ sometimes.  On meet days, he’d get up, practice for a few hours, rinse off the chlorine, and go right back to bed.  Nobody ever gave a shit aside from one of the trainers, who’d pulled him into her office once and babbled about _you’ve dropped almost six kilograms in the last few months_ and _are you eating properly_ , and even she left him alone once he started grabbing something to snack on before napping for the rest of the afternoon.  Samezuka dragged him to every day of every meet even when he wanted nothing more than to sleep.  And where had that gotten him?  Trapped in a closet with Haru and an achingly full bladder.

There was a tiny silver lining, Rin thought grimly, yanking on the drawstring of his track pants until they loosened.  It could’ve been Nagisa.  Or, worse, Makoto – Rin couldn’t deal with sympathy right now, and Makoto was afraid of the dark, which he didn’t want to deal with either.  Haru was honestly the best option if he _had_ to be stuck here with someone.  At least he kept his mouth shut.

“We’re still probably going to be in here a little longer.” Dammit, he’d jinxed himself.  “Can you hold it for a while?”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Rin muttered.  He couldn’t inhale too deeply.  The more air he pulled into his lungs, the less room there was for his bladder to expand – honestly, he knew that was illogical, but he would really prefer to think he’d asphyxiate before pissing himself in front of Haru.  “And of course I _can_.  I’m not a little kid.”

Haru yawned.  “When we _were_ kids, you couldn’t make it through swim practice without running to the bathroom halfway through.”

Rin wanted to kick him.  “Shut up.  I just said I’m not a kid anymore.”  He just _felt_ like a kid, holding himself and wobbling back and forth on the balls of his feet.  His face was uncomfortably hot, from anxiety as much as shame.  If only he was religious – perhaps a merciful deity would pass by, take pity, and strike him dead before the unthinkable happened.

 _Get a grip.  Nothing is going to happen._   But he checked his phone again and it was only 11:39.  _Shit_.  An unwise curiosity prompted him to ghost his hand over the flat plane of muscle in his abdomen, press just the tiniest bit… there was no give at all in his tight, heavy bladder, which did not take kindly to this treatment.  _Stupid fucking idea, Matsuoka_ , he thought, sinking his palm further into his crotch, right where the pressure was most excruciating.

Haru’s fingernails tapped a quick staccato beat against the wall.  “Remember how Coach Sasabe told us all that there was a special chemical in the pool that would turn the water bright purple if we peed in it?”

Of all the possible topics of conversation – Rin rolled his eyes, but the “Yeah,” rolled off his tongue before he could swallow it.  “That’s just a dumb urban legend, though.”  Not that he’d ever drummed up the courage to call Sasabe’s bluff.  Rin had been way too sensitive to embarrassment back then, but he was pretty sure half of the swim club had been shameless enough to give it a shot, and the water always stayed stubbornly clear.

“I know.  Nagisa told me.  He actually tried it,” Haru said in a tone of profound disapproval.

Rin snickered despite himself.  “Relax, mermaid, there was enough chlorine in that pool to kill anything that shouldn’t be in there.”  His bladder twinged and he bit his lip.  It would be smarter not to think about Nagisa peeing in the pool.  It would be smarter not to think about anyone peeing anywhere.  He wasn’t into that sort of thing, for starters.  “How about we change the subject… or, better yet, stop talking altogether?”

“Why weren’t you in Samezuka’s relay?”

 _What the hell?_   “Since when are you so damn talkative?”

He could see just well enough to watch Haru’s shoulders rise and fall.  “You were so fixated on that relay in sixth grade,” Haru said, “I just thought….”

“You thought wrong,” Rin said coldly.

“I –”

“You don’t fucking _get it_ , do you?  Relays are a waste of time. They’re just false reassurance for mediocre swimmers - in a solo race, there isn’t going to be anyone blazing through the water to give you a head start on the competition.” His voice was rising out of his control.  “No one is waiting on the block to catch up if you fell behind.  If your start isn’t fast enough, if your turn isn’t tight enough, if your stroke isn’t clean enough, _you’re going to lose!_   I’m not going to sabotage myself, I have way better things to do than – nnn –”  He trailed off into a pitifully high, whining groan, squirming in place as another surge of desperation closed its fists around his bladder.  Haru murmured something, maybe a question, but Rin paid no attention, too busy praying that the slight dampness in the front of his boxers was sweat.  This was the worst possible situation he could’ve found himself in.

Actually, no, that was a little hyperbolic.  As far as shitty needing-to-pee scenarios went, this was worse than curling up in his bed at school, listening to Nitori sing (or strangle cats, he wasn’t quite sure which) in the shower, wanting to go back to sleep but knowing if he did, he would have to change his sheets when he woke.  However, it hadn’t yet reached being eight years old, mortified and crying in his soggy seat in the back of his mom’s car because traffic had been at a standstill for almost an hour.  There was still a sliver of a chance he’d get out of here with his dignity intact, and he was clinging to that chance with all of his might.

Of course, on the heels of that thought was a much more horrible one.  He’d been assuming lunch break would be at noon – what if he was wrong?  For all Rin knew, lunch was at twelve-thirty, or one o’clock, or even later.  He couldn’t wait that long.  He would be damn lucky to make it to noon without needing to change his clothes.  His bladder, as if agreeing with that pessimistic outlook, constricted sharply.

He didn’t wet himself _too_ much.  His boxers and track pants were loose enough that the bit of liquid leaking out trickled halfway down his thigh before colliding with the soft fabric.  Rin’s heart threw itself against his ribcage, wild with panic; he gasped and doubled over and _squeezed_.  A breathless “ _Fuck_ –” slipped out of his mouth.

Haru whacked his head on the shelf again and quietly cursed, which might have been funny if Rin could think of anything besides how desperately he needed to empty his bladder.  “You should take off your shoes.”

“What?”

“Take off your shoes,” Haru said again.  “They’ll be a lot harder to wash than your clothes.”

Rin wasn’t sure what was more upsetting.  On one hand, the fact that Haru was not only perfectly aware of his plight, but planning ahead for what was looking more and more inevitable, made Rin feel hot and queasy with shame; on the other, Haru was _right_.  These were his good running sneakers and they had cost him a small fortune.  “Dammit!” he hissed, yanking at his shoelaces until they came undone.  Actually removing his shoes was a harder task.  It was impossible to stand still any longer, because if he stopped rocking his hips against his hand, he was going to lose the battle.  But a minute of fidgeting and twitching and hopping later, he was barefoot on the cold tile.  Figuring he might as well not leave them where they still could be in the line of fire, Rin gingerly leaned down to pick his sneakers up.

“Here, I’ll – ow!”

Haru had leaned down too.  Their heads collided, a few twinkling lights burst to life before Rin’s eyes, and his concentration wavered for a moment too long.  The hand still crammed between his legs was suddenly damp.  A few droplets dribbled through his clenched fingers.  He let his sneakers fall, not too concerned about their fate anymore.  It would be so easy to just _go_ , relieve himself of the agonizing ache… had he been alone in here, he would’ve bitten the bullet and done it already, but Rin was terribly aware of Haru’s presence.  The other boy was moving, scooping up Rin’s sneakers.  “I’ll put them on the shelf,” he said.  “Don’t worry.”  

Haru’s voice sounded a little shaky.  Rin didn’t care to guess why.  As he stood there, squirming, unable to straighten up, take a deep breath, or relax a single muscle for fear of wetting his pants like a toddler, the panic and shame unexpectedly gave way to anger.  _Don’t worry_.  Yeah, that was all well and good for _Haru_ – as soon as Nagisa came back (provided he hadn’t gotten distracted by something sparkly and forgotten about them), Haru could just stroll out of here and rejoin his stupid relay team and get on with his life like nothing had ever happened.  Rin, meanwhile, was teetering on the edge of unprecedented humiliation, his legs shaking from the strain, and his bladder was just so full.  It hurt to hold.  He gave brief thought to sitting down and seeing if that helped, but the floor was curiously sticky beneath his feet and he hadn’t yet discovered where the moldy smell was coming from, so he chose not to risk it.  The act of sitting would probably do him in, anyway.  Every movement he made, no matter how small, echoed in his overfull bladder and brought him that much closer to ruin.

“Rin.” Haru swallowed so hard Rin actually heard his throat work, and he wondered, _what’s his problem?_   Perhaps Rin’s discomfort was making him need to pee too.  “You’re going to damage something.  Maybe you should just… _do_ it.”

“Shut up.”

“But you –”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Rin shouted, horribly tempted and hating himself for it.  His voice broke.  Feeling the familiar heat accumulating behind his eyes, he sunk his teeth into his lip until a syrupy copper taste spread across his tongue.  At that moment, he swore no matter how this ended, even if he could never look Haru in the eye again, he was not going to further disgrace himself by crying.  The impulse to burst into tears over every insignificant thing had been bullied out of him in junior high school.  Admittedly, this wasn’t exactly an _insignificant_ thing – he was almost seventeen and way too fucking old to be having accidents – but he wouldn’t fall apart.  Not with Haru here.  He’d quit swimming and take up ballet before he cried in front of Haru again. 

He made that vow just in time, as his bladder promptly set up a slow leak that warned him it was on its last hurrah.  Rin had never been so glad Samezuka’s tracksuit was black.  Sure, it would still be pretty obvious if he completely peed his pants, but there was a possibility he’d be able to conceal the evidence long enough to get somewhere private.  _If_ , he thought gloomily. _Hah.  I’m done for_.  He couldn’t so easily accept defeat, though; defiant to the end, he wriggled and pressed his thighs together and chewed on his lip to distract himself until he absolutely could not hold it back anymore.

The sudden cramping in his abdomen took him by surprise.  It felt like someone had thrust a knife in just beneath his navel.  A thin keening sound escaped Rin’s throat and he wrapped an arm around his belly – he’d broken bones, pinched nerves, smacked his head against very solid things, but that had _hurt_.  “Dammit,” he whispered, “ _dammit_ …” and that was the end.  His exhausted muscles threw in their resignation.  The dribble spilling over his fingers strengthened into a hot, steady stream that erased the few remaining dry spots on the front of his boxers, seeped through to his damp track pants, and started running down his leg.

Rin’s blood roared in his ears.  Haru’s breathing was strangely loud in the confined space.  Despite the background noise, Rin could hear the soft, wet sound of liquid gushing out and pattering against the tile, which meant Haru could hear it too.  He wanted to throw up.  It was a testament to how full he’d been that his bladder was only just beginning to register relief; his pants were sodden from crotch to cuff, there was a puddle spreading between his feet, and he still wasn’t quite drained yet.  His legs quivered and he had to lean against the wall for support, bent almost double.  Embarrassing, depressing, pathetic, childish… this moment was all of those things, but it felt _so fucking good_ to finally go, voluntarily or otherwise, that he almost didn’t care.

 _Almost_ , of course, was the operative word.  The flood gradually tapered back down to a halting dribble, then subsided entirely, and Rin spent a few long moments stuck on the sensation of a blissfully empty bladder.  His abdominal muscles ached fiercely.  Now that he could feel something besides a desperate, all-encompassing urge to pee, he became aware of a dull throb in his lower back and hoped he hadn’t caused his bladder to back up into his kidneys or something.  He didn’t have the presence of mind to genuinely worry about it just yet.  If he turned yellow and collapsed tonight, maybe Nitori would be kind enough to call the hospital.  Grimacing at his dripping hand, he straightened as much as he could, mindful of the pain, and wiped his hand off on the back of his pants.  _At least that’s over with_ , he thought, dizzy with relief.

And then, at the sound of Haru’s sneaker squeaking against the floor, reality came dashing up and kicked Rin square in the teeth.

He was locked in the closet.  With Haru.  He was locked in the closet with Haru and he’d pissed himself like a baby.  On the plus side, he couldn’t smell mold or lemon-scented cleaning fluid anymore, but the thick, musky odor that now hung in the air like a fog was far from an improvement.  His pants were clinging to his legs, the fabric heavy with soaked-up urine, and cooling much too fast for his liking.  And, just to top it off, his bare feet were wet.  Sensing that pressure building behind his eyes again, Rin blinked furiously until it diminished.  _Suck it up.  No crying!_ Mercifully, Haru had taken Rin’s instructions to heart and stopped talking.  He wasn’t normally the type of guy to laugh at someone’s misfortune or make a comment on how weak Rin was for not being able to control his stupid bladder.  Just in case he was thinking about being an asshole, though…. “If you ever tell _anyone_ what happened here,” Rin said, “I will come to your house while you’re asleep and you’ll wake up, very confused, in the fucking _Sahara_.  Understand?”

He’d meant it to be intimidating, but his voice came out quavery and paper-thin, as if he was going to start bawling.  “I won’t tell anyone,” Haru said.  He didn’t sound a whole lot more composed.  In fact, he sounded almost out of breath.

“You’d better not.”  The short-lived relief had passed.  Were there a convenient hole located nearby, Rin would’ve gladly crawled into it and waited to die.  The last time he’d wet his pants in front of someone, he’d been nine, and it was only his mother.  Still degrading, yeah, but she’d toilet-trained two kids, she could deal with it.  He gingerly stepped away from the puddle on the tile and wondered if Haru was completely disgusted.  This was very quickly becoming the most awful day of his life.  “Because I –”

“Shh!  Do you hear that?”

They both fell silent, and Rin heard it.  Distant footsteps were echoing through the deserted hallway, slowly growing louder as they approached.  Haru started to inhale.  Rin grasped his intentions at the very last minute, panicked, and threw himself at Haru.

He’d misjudged the size of the closet.  Rin smashed into him at full tilt, banged their foreheads together, knocked his own head on the shelf Haru had complained about, and for a moment was too dazed to continue.  He recovered quickly, though, went to clamp his hand over Haru’s mouth – then remembered the abuse his hands had suffered recently and used his much cleaner forearm instead.  “Don’t you _dare_ ,” he whispered harshly.

Haru, wiggling like a fish on a hook, reached up and pried Rin’s arm away from his lips.  “If that’s not one of the others, they won’t know we’re –”

“Good!”  The last thing Rin wanted right now was for _anyone_ to open that door.  He could only hear one set of footsteps, meaning it probably wasn’t Haru’s little posse and a complete stranger might come to their rescue only to find Rin a total sopping mess and the closet stinking of piss.  No thanks.  He’d rather stay in here for the rest of his life, which, since he was going to stab himself with the broken mop handle before the Iwatobi team returned, wouldn’t be very long.  Haru was still squirming.  Fearing he might go pounding on the door and shouting for help, Rin planted his feet outside of Haru’s and kept him pinned, not really giving a damn if he was dampening the other boy’s clothes.

The realization that their hips were pressed intimately close together came slowly.  The realization that one of them was rock-hard came much, much faster.  Given most of the blood in Rin’s body was clinging to his burning cheeks, that left a single culprit.

“Haru,” he said, in the low, menacing tone he used to scare away swimmers fooling around in the lane next to him.  Haru instantly stilled.  “ _What_.  _The_.  _Fuck_.”

Haru’s breath puffed against Rin’s sleeve, heating his skin.  A strange little shiver snuck down his spine.  “Honestly,” Haru said faintly, “I have no idea.”

That didn’t make Rin feel any better.  He’d just been through one of the most miserable, mortifying experiences possible, and if Haru was actually getting _turned on_ by it…. Haru pushed at him and Rin eased off a little, because he had enough problems right now without thinking about Haru’s erection poking into his belly.  “That is _messed up_.  Isn’t Nagisa’s father a doctor?”

“…yes?”

“Great.  Maybe he can diagnose whatever the _hell_ is wrong with you –”

They’d quite forgotten about the footsteps, so when someone tapped on the door, both boys jumped and cracked their heads against the shelf.  “Uh, guys?  Are… are you killing each other in there?”

 _Makoto_.  Normally, his presence was not a particularly imposing one, but his current predicament combined with the memory of the lecture he’d been dealt yesterday turned Rin’s knees to water.  “No,” Haru said, “we’re fine,” suggesting his definition of the word ‘fine’ was very different from Rin’s.

“Oh… I stole the key from Nagisa when he wasn’t paying attention, so I’m going to let you out now, all right?” Makoto said.  In a much smaller voice, he added, “Please don’t kill me.”

Rin’s brain immediately did its best blue-screen-of-death impression, wiping every thought from his mind except a panicked chant of _no please no don’t open it I don’t want him to see no no no anything but this!_

“Rin,” Haru said softly.  His hand landed on Rin’s neck, which may or may not have been what he was aiming for.  “It’s okay.  It’s only Makoto, he won’t –” 

Rin shoved away from him, stumbling backwards across the closet as the key scraped in the lock.  In his first stroke of luck today, when the door opened and swung in, it trapped Haru rather than him.  Blinded, frantic, he bolted for the sudden spill of light – and slammed right into Makoto.  Makoto, unprepared for the assault, went down with a cry.  Rin tripped, but he managed to stay on his feet and rapidly regained his balance.  He didn’t stick around to see if Makoto was hurt.  He just ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized about two paragraphs away from completing this fic that I'd missed the line of the prompt where OP asked for comfort, so I scrapped the original ending and a short second part will be posted as soon as I finish it. If you're rather pretend it ends here, go for it.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~please don't kick me out of the fandom I'm sorry about this~~


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't plan to finally finish this fic on Rin's birthday. Seriously, this is the worst present ever - all those lovely birthday fics and fanart, and I do _this_. But to be fair, I ran into a massive writer's block with this part and then real life kicked my ass and I beg your forgiveness. Hopefully this doesn't fall too far short of your expectations. So here it is, the long-awaited "comfort" chapter. Scare quotes are entirely necessary because I used a really, really loose interpretation of the word "comfort".
> 
> *runs into the sunset screaming _I'm free! I'm freeeeeeeeee!_ *

Screw the prefectural tournament.  Screw the relays.  Screw Seijuurou and his _team spirit_.  Rin wanted to go home. 

In theory, he might be able to pull it off – if he started walking right this second and skirted around anyone in a Samezuka tracksuit, he could potentially avoid getting caught, be able to escape the venue, and find a clear path to the nearest train station.  He had enough money in his wallet to cover the ticket to school.  From that point, it would be a cakewalk, at least until the rest of the team returned and the captain spanked him for insubordination or something.

In practice… there was no way.  Halfway down the hall, Rin had stepped on an old pencil stub and was painfully reminded that he’d left his sneakers on the shelf in the closet.  He kept running nonetheless, since he wouldn’t go back to Haru and Makoto no matter what, and followed the signs to the bathroom he’d been looking for in the first place.  While it was not as deserted as he’d hoped for, the only other occupant was in one of the toilets and didn’t see Rin shamefully skulking inside.  He’d shut himself into the closest stall, inspected his pants – black though they might have been, they were still stained visibly where he had wet them – sat down on the floor, and tried not to dissolve into tears.

This was _so fucking unfair_.  He must have pushed little old ladies in front of trucks or deep-fried kittens in a past incarnation to deserve this.  Like the last four and a half years hadn’t sucked enough, when things were finally starting to look up, he’d gone ahead and pissed himself while locked in a closet with Haru, and rescue had been two measly minutes away.  If Rin was searching for some sign that he wasn’t weak and pathetic, today was undeniably not going to provide one.  He wanted to curl up and bury his face in his knees, but, given the state of his pants, that would be kind of disgusting.  Letting his head fall back against the wall instead, he stared at the water-stained ceiling, weighing his options. 

He could try washing his clothes in the sink.  There were no showers in here, because that would’ve made Rin’s life a hundred times easier, but just soaking them until they were clean enough to wear home might help.  He’d tell anyone who asked that he had spilled his drink on his pants and needed to rinse them off.  That would work, as long as nobody walked in while he was half-naked… and therein lay the problem with that course of action.  While this bathroom wasn’t a hub of activity, someone loitered in another stall, and over the noise from a hand dryer, two boys were having a loud conversation about their club’s deplorable performance in the medley relay.  Rin was a swimmer, he was pretty used to being nude from the waist _up_ , but he had limits and people ogling his junk without permission was one of them.

The alternative was to try sneaking back to the locker room, cleaning up, and changing – except he wasn’t competing today, so he hadn’t brought his bag with him.  Even his swimsuit was at school.  If he wanted fresh clothes, he would have to steal them, and Rin still had a few morals left.  He also really, _really_ didn’t want to go anyplace where someone could see him and figure out what he’d done.

So.  He had no options.  He could just sit here for the foreseeable future, cold and damp and struggling not to cry.  That sounded like a plan.

 _I wonder what Haru’s doing_ , he thought.

Having a better time of it than Rin, certainly.  He and Makoto had presumably joined up with Nagisa, Gou, and Speedo Glasses and were either watching the relays or having lunch.  Haru would find a place that sold mackerel, Makoto would try to convince him to eat something else so he didn’t die of mercury poisoning before he graduated high school, and Haru would ignore him because when was he ever reasonable when it came to mackerel?  He and Makoto would share all their food anyway.  Nagisa would steal bits off of everyone else’s plates so he could taste everything, Gou would fend him off with her chopsticks, Makoto would do that mother-hen thing where he made everyone behave, and then Haru would try to climb into a water dispenser or something and get them all thrown out.

That was a really depressing train of thought, considering his own situation.  Whatever, he didn’t care what Haru did as long as he kept his mouth shut.  But something horrible occurred to him out of the blue – what if Haru got it into his socially-inept head to “help” and told _Gou_?  The possibility of his little sister knowing he’d peed his pants like a kindergartener… if that happened, he’d have no choice but to swallow the foamy hand soap from the dispenser on the wall and _pray_ it killed him quickly.

Or maybe Haru had just blabbed to everyone and they were all laughing at him right now.  Disregarding the burn in his eyes, Rin told himself it didn’t matter.  He didn’t give a damn about those guys anyway.  As long as nobody at Samezuka ever found out, he would be fine.

He sat there and quietly moped for a while, listening to people come and go in flurries of conversation until the traffic died down.  His wet pants were itching in awkward places.  He’d just begun to think he could try splashing water onto his clothes without removing them when the door opened yet again, and he thumped his head off the wall a few times in frustration, wishing he’d stabbed himself with that mop handle.

“Rin?”

 _Or maybe,_ he thought grimly, _Haru’s been looking for me so he can rub it in.  I hate my life._

“Are you in here?” Rin heard shoes squeaking on the tile, approaching… and stopping just outside his stall.  He held his breath.  If he didn’t answer, maybe Haru would assume it was someone else and move on.

Haru poked a finger through the narrow gap where the door didn’t quite meet with the wall.  “Rin, I can see your hair.”

 _Dammit_.  “What do you want?” Rin snapped, pleased to find he didn’t sound like he was on the verge of tears anymore.

Something hit the floor with a _clomp_.  “You forgot your sneakers in the closet,” Haru said, sliding the items in question in beneath the stall door.

“Fat lot of good those do me,” Rin muttered.  They were dry, yes, but the cuffs of his pants were still sopping, so he wasn’t going to put his sneakers on.  This did solve the problem of how he was going to retrieve them, though – if Makoto had locked the closet with Rin’s shoes inside, that was a _lot_ of money down the drain.  “Go away.”

Haru did nothing of the sort.  He moved around for a minute, unzipped something, fiddled with one of the sink taps, turned on the water.  What was he _doing_ out there?  Getting his hands soaked and shoving them down his pants?  Hell, maybe he needed some ‘release’ after what had happened in the closet.  Rin made a face at the mottled green wall.  He never would have thought Haru… no, wait, that wasn’t true.  Haru had always been kind of weird – gross fetishes involving bodily fluids did not seem entirely out of his league.  Now, if it had been _Makoto_ instead, Rin would’ve needed to reevaluate his entire life. 

“Here,” Haru said.  Rin looked up to see a dark bundle of fabric spill over the top of the door.  He caught it automatically, felt the soft, smooth material of a swimsuit beneath his fingers.  “Change into that.  We can rinse your clothes in the sink and try drying them with the hand dryer.”

Rin’s brain had taken a beating today, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when it shut down again and left him gaping stupidly at the swimsuit in his hands.  _What,_ he thought blankly.  There was no reason for Haru to help him.  They weren’t even friends, and Rin had been trying to sever the last tie that remained between them ever since he’d come back to Japan.  Did he have an ulterior motive?  Blackmail, perhaps, although that didn’t seem to line up with Haru’s personality.  “I don’t need your help,” Rin said, and repeated, “Go away.”

As expected, Haru ignored him.  Rin would’ve stubbornly sat there and refused to comply until Haru had to go home, but his pants were ice-cold where they stuck to his skin and he smelled gross and the prospect of wearing something dry was dangerously appealing.  Slowly, he turned the suit over, smoothed it out.

When he saw the green stripes running the length of the legskin, his heart splashed into his stomach and exploded.

“Whose…?” 

“Makoto always brings a spare.” Sounding almost apologetic, Haru added, “He’s close to your size.  He said you could borrow it.”

Rin was pretty sure his lungs had shriveled into raisins.  There was no other explanation for his sudden inability to breathe. “You said you wouldn’t tell,” he said faintly.  “You _said_ –”

“I didn’t.  He figured it out on his own.  He won’t say anything.”

That wasn’t the _point_.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that now Haru was going to think of Rin not as a worthy rival, but as the poor loser who wet his pants in the closet, Makoto would probably be _sympathetic_ and _understanding_ thenext time they met.  Rin didn’t want anyone’s pity.   And he didn’t want to owe Haru and Makoto for coming to his rescue, either.  They were steadfastly refusing to let him push them away and he _hated_ them for it.

The door of the stall next to his own squealed.  “Are you crying?” Haru asked – he sounded much too close by for Rin’s liking, and when he looked up, Haru was peering over the wall between the toilets.

“I’m not crying!” Rin ducked his head and rubbed his face on his sleeve.  It came away damp.  He hoped nobody would hold him to that ‘quitting swimming for ballet’ promise he’d made in the closet.  “And what the hell, Haru, get down from there!  What are you, five?” 

Haru just kept staring at him, infuriatingly expressionless, making Rin’s skin prickle with discomfort.  Deplorable social skills or not, Haru should at least know better than to climb onto the toilet to look into other stalls – Rin’s mother had yelled at him for doing that when he was a kid and he’d not done it since.  “Go away,” he said yet again, curling in on himself, wishing the ground would cave beneath him.  “Haven’t I been humiliated enough for one day?  Just _leave me alone_.”

“Stop refusing help when it’s offered to you.  Put the swimsuit on.” Haru’s head sank out of sight; a moment later, Rin heard him leap to the floor and then start messing with one of the faucets again.

Rin looked at the legskin.  He could sit here feeling sorry for himself until his clothes dried, or he could choke down a fat slice of humble pie and do as Haru said.

He banged his head against the wall one more time, for good measure, muttered, “I hate pie,” and got to his feet.

Peeling off his track pants was both a pain and a relief – it felt great to finally get rid of them, but baring his damp skin to the air was enough to make him break out in goosebumps, and the scent of pee turned his stomach.  And once his pants and boxers were in a sorry heap on the tile, he felt unsettlingly exposed, despite the stall walls surrounding him.  He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.

“Here,” Haru said.  A hand bearing a wad of wet paper towels appeared beneath the door.  Rin was dying for a long, hot shower, but those paper towels were looking real good after stewing in his own juices.  He snatched them up and began vigorously scrubbing at his thighs, trying to get rid of that _stench_.  By the time the cheap, public-bathroom-issue towels had disintegrated into bits of useless fluff from the abuse, he felt much more hygienic, if not exactly clean.  He used the last of the toilet paper on the roll to dry himself off before slipping into the legskin.

Then, finally, Rin gave into the impulse to curl up, hug his legs to his chest, and rest his forehead on his knees.  Just for a moment, he wanted to close his eyes and pretend nothing had never happened – forget not just wetting himself, but Iwatobi’s relay, too, and while he was at it, he wanted to erase that lecture Makoto had given him yesterday – so that was what he did.  He pressed his face against the cool, silky fabric, stopped thinking about how badly he’d embarrassed himself today, took a deep breath.  Makoto’s swimsuit smelled like laundry detergent.  It was a thousand times more comfortable than his track pants had been, even if it was too loose around his waist and ankles and boasted about a kilometer of extra fabric in the crotch.

Haru tapped on the door.  “Give me your clothes.”

“You’re not going to jerk off over them, are you?” Rin muttered.  He winced the moment the words had left his mouth – he’d not really meant to say them out loud – but let them hang in the air nonetheless, half-hoping Haru would get angry at him.  He could deal with Haru being angry.  This thing where Haru kept trying to help him despite Rin’s repeated rejections of his assistance was too confusing. 

“Not in a public bathroom,” Haru said blandly.  Rin’s eyebrows nearly shot right off his face.  Had Haru – stoic, blank-faced, humorless Haru – just made a _joke_?  No, couldn’t be.  He was probably serious.  Rin dawdled for a moment, wondering if he should trust his clothes to someone who practically got off on him wetting them, then gingerly untangled his pants from the soggy heap and pushed them beneath the door.  There was _no_ way he’d let Haru touch his underwear.  As his pants disappeared from sight, Rin picked up his boxers between thumb and forefinger and wondered if going commando for the rest of the afternoon was pragmatism or cowardice.

The latter, he thought dourly, and once again stood.

Haru’s back was to the stalls, so when Rin sucked it up and unbolted the door, they didn’t immediately come face-to-face – and when Haru glanced up, Rin was already looking away so their eyes didn’t meet in the mirror.  He put five sinks between them and told himself it was so nobody would come in, see the two of them washing clothes, and reach the correct, if far-fetched, conclusion.  To be fair, it _was_ the cleanest of the remaining sinks, though the warmest water the faucet could manage was just slightly above freezing.  Rin cranked the tap as far as it would go and plunged his boxers into the spray. 

Haru made no attempts at conversation, for which Rin was silently grateful.  He scrubbed a handful of pink soap into his boxers as best he could with just his bare hands.  Given the option, he preferred smelling like a bunch of lilacs were having an orgy in his pants to smelling like he’d pissed himself.  He very carefully did not look up from his work, afraid he’d catch Haru’s eye and then be compelled to ask the question he kept trapped behind his teeth for fear of what the answer might be – _why are you even helping me?_

The door banged open and in walked a boy in a blindingly green tracksuit.  He didn’t give them a second glance before strolling into a stall.  A moment later, however, he said, “Hey, uh, do these sneakers belong to either of you?”

“They’re mine, just leave them,” Rin said.  It came out sharper than he’d intended, and the boy muttered something that sounded impolite and didn’t ask any further questions.  Rin wished he had put his shoes on – considering the sticky closet floor and the bathroom tile that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the Crusades, he just _knew_ he was going to contract some weird foot disease – but he’d been in such a hurry to wash his stuff and get this whole miserable ordeal over with that he had forgotten.

The toilet flushed and the boy emerged, planting himself in between Haru and Rin to wash his hands.  And then he looked, very slowly, from Haru – who’d finished his task and was leisurely wringing out Rin’s track pants, caught up in his own little world somewhere – to Rin – trying to locate his boxers beneath a mountain of bubbles (in hindsight, the soap had been a terrible idea) and wearing the jacket that went along with those track pants.  Out of the corner of his eye, Rin caught him staring, slammed his hands down on the edge of the sink, splattered them both with suds, and snarled, “ _What?”_

“Nothing!” the boy said defensively.  He gave Rin a dark look, then proceeded over to the paper towel dispenser, found it empty, and just wiped his hands on his pants on the way to the door.

There was no way he’d figured it out.  And if he had, the chances of him being vindictive enough to hunt down Rin’s team and tell them his suspicions were extremely low, if he’d even recognized the uniform in the first place.  Rin had nothing to worry about.  But he was starting to feel sick and jittery nevertheless, and it must have shown on his face, because Haru said, “Rin,” in a tone that suggested he was about to insist everything was okay _again_.  That was the last thing Rin wanted to hear right now, so he cast around frantically for a different topic of conversation and wound up blurting, “So do you get off on _everyone_ pissing themselves or is it just me?”

Watching Haru blush proved to be both satisfying and fascinating – a scarlet stain gradually crept across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, and his ears went _brilliantly_ red.  Rin fished his boxers out of the foam and moved over to the next sink to rinse them off, pleased he’d managed to elicit an emotional response.  And if Haru was embarrassed enough to never, ever mention this little incident again, freeing Rin from the fear that it might be unexpectedly brought up one day, that was just a bonus.  “If _that’s_ the sort of stuff you’re into… I mean, I know Makoto used to wet the bed, but unless you and him have a thing I don’t know about, I think you’re out of luck.”  His boxers were as clean as they were going to get without a proper wash, so he wrung them out good, turned off the water, and reached over to take the pants Haru was holding out.  As he did, he made the mistake of looking Haru in the eye.

Haru didn’t look angry.  He didn’t even look embarrassed anymore, which was an impressive turnaround time, but there was something unidentifiable in his expression that made Rin’s stomach clench around thin air.  Distantly, he realized he was hungry.  Haru let go of Rin’s pants, stepped back, and said, “You’d be a lot less of a pain if you didn’t always need to make everyone else feel as bad as you do.”

“I –” _don’t do that_ , Rin wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come.  Haru turned back to the sink and began washing his hands like he hadn’t just made Rin feel about two centimeters tall with one simple, painfully true statement.

“I should give Makoto his swimsuit back,” Haru said, filling his palm with a massive glob of soap.  The air in the bathroom was so thick with the scent of artificial lilacs that Rin could taste it, and he told himself that was the reason for the sudden churn of nausea in his stomach.

“Uh.  Yeah.” He grabbed his boxers off the edge of the sink and went over to the hand dryers.  He harbored no delusions of actually getting his clothes dry with one of these things; at best, he hoped to heat them enough that putting them on wouldn’t cause his testicles to retreat into his body.  His plan now was to hide on the bus for the remainder of the afternoon, tell everyone that some idiot had accidentally dumped their drink into his lap, and not give a single shit about anything Seijuurou said because it had just been that bad of a day.

The dryer on the left didn’t work.  The one on the right, rustier and boasting an enormous blue penis drawn on the front, did not look promising.  Rin hit the button and the dryer roared to life, but despite the noise, it only coughed and spit a weak stream of lukewarm air.  “Screw it,” Rin muttered, retreating into his stall to dress.

Stripping off Makoto’s legskin, knowing it would be replaced with cold, sodden pants, was almost enough to make Rin volunteer to return it himself tomorrow.  He couldn’t work up the courage, though, so he draped it over the door for Haru to take and stepped into his boxers.  As he wiggled the clingy fabric up his legs, he pondered the way Haru had looked at him just a minute ago.  No matter what adjective he put to that expression, it just didn’t fit.  _Disappointed_ came close but wasn’t quite right.  He saw the legskin slip out of sight as Haru pulled it down, and all at once it hit him.

 _Resignation_.  Haru hadn’t been surprised by Rin’s attempt to upset him – to make him feel as bad as Rin himself did.  He’d given assistance, undeserved though it was, and assumed he would be bitten for his efforts, and Rin had met his expectations perfectly.  God, this was some really asshole behavior, even for him.  No wonder he didn’t have any friends.  That thought hurt more than he anticipated, and reminding himself _I don’t **need** any friends _ didn’t soothe the ache that had sprung up in his chest.

Once he was as presentable as possible, Rin shoved his feet into his sneakers, his hands into his pockets, and bit his lip.  He wanted to run out of this bathroom and never return, but first…. “Hey.  Tell Makoto thanks for the swimsuit, okay?  And, uh.  Thanks for the help.”

Haru didn’t respond.  Rin sighed – he was pretty sure he knew what Haru was waiting for, and while it rankled his pride to apologize for anything, his pride was presently in a puddle in a dank closet that probably wouldn’t be opened again for another twenty years.  And he’d been an ungrateful asshole.  “Listen, I… I’m sorry about the shit I said.”  He scuffed the toe of his sneaker over a smudge on the tile and mumbled, “It’s been a rough day.”

Again, there was nothing, not even a wordless sound to acknowledge that Rin had spoken.  Frowning, he unlocked the door and swung it open.  “Haru?”

The bathroom was empty aside from him.  Haru had taken the legskin and vanished and hadn’t heard a single word Rin said, received neither gratitude nor apology.  He’d finally done as Rin demanded from the beginning and gone away.

Rin had thought he would feel better once Haru left, but instead, he just felt very, very alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last line of the outline for this literally read "EVERYONE IS MISERABLE AND NOTHING IS RESOLVED".
> 
> Happy Birthday, Rinrin. Believe it or not, you're my favorite character.


End file.
